Republicans Seek to Repel Country of Origin Food Labels

Does everyone remember last year the Hepatitis Outbreak that occured at the Mexican restaurant chain? The outbreak took place at Chi-Chi's diner in
Pennsylvania in early November 2003. The outbreak was linked back to green onions that were grown in Mexico fertilized with human feces.

Republicans are actually wanting to remove the law that requires country of origin to be labeled on our foods claiming that it costs too much money.
Not only does this make no sense it is also harmful to domestic business and consumers.

American food producers will no longer be able to stand out as made in America making cheaper foreign goods more attractive to consumers.

Without country of Origin labels how will consumers know to avoid contaiminated foods that are spreading harful diseases such as Hepatitis?

The Republicans are totally in the wrong on this and I agree wholeheartedly with the democrats on this one.

Note: I am posting the entire news to make for easier viewing because it is behind a registration site .

DIET: Republicans looking to repeal law requiring food labels to carry country of origin

LIBBY QUAID

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Telling consumers where their meat, fruit and vegetables came from seemed such a good idea to U.S. ranchers and farmers in competition
with imports that Congress two years ago ordered the food industry to do it. But meatpackers and food processors fought the law from the start, and
newly emboldened Republicans now plan to repeal it before Thanksgiving.

As part of the 2002 farm bill, country-of-origin labeling was supposed to have gone into effect this fall. Congress last year postponed it until 2006.
Now, House Republicans are trying to wipe it off the books as part of a spending bill they plan to finish this month.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he expected the Senate to agree to repealing the measure, whose main champion two years ago was the
Senate's Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

"I can't find any real opposition to doing exactly what we want to do here," Blunt said.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., said there is plenty of opposition to dumping country-of-origin labeling. He is sending letters to congressional budget
negotiators, asking them to drop the repeal provision, he said.

"They don't want to run it out for a clean vote. They know they couldn't win it on a clean vote. So they want to stick it in this must-pass
package," Pomeroy said. "To me, this looks like a big, wet kiss to some of their major corporate contributors in the food-processing industry, at
the expense of farmers and ranchers."

Putting the repeal measure into a huge spending bill makes for a difficult choice, Pomeroy said Wednesday. "In the end, there's an awful lot of
funding critical to North Dakota in that package," Pomeroy said. "I don't want to be put into that position."

President Bush never supported mandatory labeling. Chances for repealing the law improved when Daschle, still his party's leader in the Senate, was
defeated for re-election Nov. 2.

"For Republicans to deny Americans the opportunity to `buy American' at the grocery store is anti-consumer, anti-farmer and anti-rancher," Daschle
said Wednesday.

He and other Western senators were making an effort to keep repeal of the labeling law out of the wide-ranging spending bill Congress plans to pass
before it leaves. Democrats acknowledged there was not much of an appetite to wage a battle over it.

Those who want the repeal say the labeling system is so expensive that it far outweighs any benefit to consumers. The Agriculture Department has
estimated the cost could range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the first year alone.

"Everybody realized it was going to cost a lot of money, and ranchers were going to have to bear most of that," said Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo.,
chairman of a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry subcommittee on the issue.

Food processors and other opponents of mandatory labeling say they are amenable to voluntary labels.

Supporters of the labeling requirement says opponents want the repeal so producers will not have to spend money getting ready to follow the law. The
House Agriculture Committee approved legislation this year to substitute a voluntary system for the current law.

The issue divides cattlemen and other livestock producers. Many of the bigger livestock and feedlot operations, as well as food processors, do not
want mandatory labeling.

Producers in favor of mandatory labels believe consumers will prefer U.S.-grown food over foreign imports. The law requires companies to put
country-of-origin labels on meat, vegetables and fruit.

"We really feel that country-of-origin labeling is one of the key things we need to keep ourselves competitive in that market. I understand the
trade-offs," said Doran Junek, a rancher in Brewster, Kan. Junek also is executive director of the Kansas Cattlemen's Association, an affiliate of
R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America.

Consumer groups say the issue is whether buyers have a right to know where their food came from.

"When nutrition labeling was suggested by advocates 25 years ago, the industry kept saying, `Oh, we can't do that,'" said Carol Tucker Foreman,
director of food policy for the Consumer Federation of America. "Look, they've done it. They love it. Consumers use it."

The wrangling does not affect fish because Congress did not include fish last year when it delayed the mandatory labeling. Fresh and frozen fish will
be required to carry labels beginning in April.

John Kerry will ensure family farmers and ranchers are treated fairly here at home by banning unfair and anticompetitive practices, like packer
ownership of livestock, and he supports mandatory country of origin labeling to help consumers buy U.S. food and agricultural products instead of
foreign imports.

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